Jose Chavez y Chavez

Jose Chavez y Chavez (1851-1924) was a Mexican-American outlaw in New Mexico during the Wild West. He was a member of the Lincoln County Regulators during the Lincoln County War, and he rode with Billy the Kid until Billy's death in 1881. Unlike most outlaws, he died in his bed at the age of 72.

Early life
Jose Chavez y Chavez was born in 1851, the son of a Spanish father and a Navajo mother who lived on the Red Sand Creek reservation in New Mexico. When Lawrence Murphy's government-contracted store supplied the Navajo reservation with rotten meat instead of good-quality beef, Chavez y Chavez and a band of Navajo left in the night to go to a trader's camp and get food. The traders opened fire, killing all but Chavez, and he fled back to the reservation. He discovered that the US Army had found out about the "Indian uprising" and butchered the inhabitants of the reservation, killing Chavez's mother with a saber from her privates to her neck and bashing his baby sisters' heads in with boot heels. An angry and vengeful Chavez decided to go to Lincoln to kill Murphy, and it was then that John Tunstall found him and took him in.

Regulators
Chavez worked on Tunstall's ranch and joined the Lincoln County Regulators, and, after Tunstall's murder, he joined the Regulators in hunting down his killers. He was wounded by Buckshot Roberts in the same gunfight that took Richard M. Brewer's life, and, resolving that he had to go west to maintain his people's survival, he planned to leave the Regulators shortly after. However, Billy the Kid convinced Chavez that the Regulators were his new family, and Chavez agreed to stay. He went on to take part in the murder of Sheriff William J. Brady and in the Battle of Lincoln. After Billy's death in 1881, Chavez became a drifter, and he eventually became a deputy sheriff. He later returned to crime as a bandit, and he was captured in 1896. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but he helped the police during a jail riot and was pardoned in 1909. He died at his home in 1924.